


Power and Control

by Canarii



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Dark Knight Rises (2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Birds of Prey! AU, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Mixed Canon, POV Female Character, ladies getting shit done, post season three au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 16:18:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3816886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canarii/pseuds/Canarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you're not the Predator, you're the Prey. If not the Queen, you're the Pawn.</p><p>But it's never that simple, is it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power and Control

**Author's Note:**

> This was written within the context of an RP, set after season three of Arrow using the version of Talia shown in the Dark Knight films.
> 
>  
> 
> The newly resurrected Sara is looking for a fresh start, somewhere far away from Starling City. And she's not the only one. 
> 
> They move to Gotham, and with some grudging support from Talia , start to make a name for themselves.
> 
> The newspapers call them the Birds of Prey.

Power doesn’t corrupt.

It’s one of the few things of which Sara Lance is certain, in an uncertain world. In her life she’d seen more than one person come into power beyond anything they’d ever expected, and she’d seen what it had done to them.

Power didn’t corrupt, it corroded, it peeled away the layers of a person until nothing was left but the raw core of who they were.

It’s how she learns that a part of her enjoys causing pain.

The first time she has a man at her mercy (in the field, not in training) Sara breaks his arm in three places. It was brutal, unnecessary, but at the time all she knew was that she _could_ , that all her own suffering and rigorous training had led her to a moment in which she was strong enough to bring a brute twice her size to his knees.

He sobs like a child when she wrenches his shattered limb behind his back and a part of her loves it.

 

***

 

Anya Raatko dies of a brain aneurism at age thirty.

To her six year old daughter, the world might as well have ended, but it doesn’t.

Nyssa’s hardly in the orphanage for two days before her father comes for her. He seems impossibly tall, in a well cut suit and a voice that tells her that everything is okay. He promises her that she’ll never know fear again, or feel helpless.

Twenty years will pass before she will ever doubt him.

The single candle still lit does little to illuminate the tangle of sheets and limbs that had become the demon’s daughter and Taer al’asfer. But the darkness does hide Nyssa’s quiet shame.

She is the Heir to the Demon, and she should not be so free with her choice of lovers. She should not have been drawn in by sky blue eyes and fearless laughter, nor should she ache to kiss every scrape and bruise and scar.

Nyssa forces herself away, sitting up in silence to begin feeling for her clothes when fingers find her wrist,

“Stay?” Sara asks, in her clumsy arabic, her lips still have trouble with the new language, no matter how sweet they taste. She was not one of them. and it was yet likely she would never survive to be. The request is soft, genuine without pleading, and through the flickering light they find each other’s eyes, and Nyssa is undone.

She lies back beside her little bird, helpless to deny her. It’s the first time she’s slept in anyone’s arms since her mother died, and for years to come she will marvel at the power Sara has over her, with only a touch, or a glance.

 

***

 

Talia was born for power.

The child of a wartime princess and a man who would be king, she was raised from ashes to her rightful place at her father’s side. Nearly.

Life had hardened her to tempered steel by the time she was brought before her father. He does not know her, and he has another child, another daughter, a sulking little usurper who had taken Talia’s place as his firstborn, his Heir.

The girl they call her sister has their father’s dark eyes, and even at seven can set her jaw just like his. _Seven,_ had he even waited a year after Talia’s mother had gone into that hell to find himself another woman?

Talia can wait for anything. Talia learned to be patient in dust and darkness, where the drumbeat in her head, the chorus that chanted rise, rise, rise pushed her onwards.

Her father grows weak, and she grows strong. It has been many years since she dwelled in Nanda Parbat, years in which she had built her own little kingdom out of the grime and filth of Gotham.

She thinks often on how blind the eyes of the Demon’s Head have become, that her father didn’t see the small ways in which she claimed her birthright. Her spies tell her that Ra’s is rarely seen outside of his personal chambers anymore, that rumours spread of his failing health, failing mind. She’s dreamed of the day that is to come for years.

Her father lies in his bed, aged and frail, sleeping the fitful sleep of an old man with death at his heels. He will wake to see her standing above him, the child he forgot, and he will _know._

Know in that moment that the guards at his door are hers, and that everything he has ever had is now hers. He will look into his child’s eyes and see what he could have loved, have nurtured, and what has now taken his throne out from beneath him.

And that’s when she will cut his throat.

Soon.

_Soon._

 

***

 

Thea’s twenty-first birthday starts with an envelope under her door. Inside is a plane ticket, and a note with three sets of unmistakable handwriting.

 _Go get ‘im, tiger : )_ It reads on the centre of the card, and Thea laughs and brushes the sleep from her eyes. Thanks to an unexpected layover in Metropolis, it’s after dark by the time Thea’s flight gets into Coast City, but she doesn’t care because someone is waiting for her at the gate.

It’s the first time she’s seen Roy in six months, and nearly a year since they’d shared a bed. It’s a narrow bed, meant for one person and right on point with Roy’s spartan decorating sense, but it’s the perfect size to cuddle up in and trace each others’ scars, both old and new.

She’d come to understand him so much better in the time they’d been apart. His guilt, his responsibility he felt over the death he’d caused, no matter that he hadn’t been in control of himself. No more than she had.

Just because Sara was currently breathing and reminding her to eat breakfast every other day didn’t mean that dark spot in Thea’s heart had gone away. She’d been used, they’d both been used, deadly puppets in a game where someone else pulled their strings.

And in the dark of Roy’s room, their bruises and scrapes, the archer’s calluses on their fingers are mirrored in each other. Two people trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and make new stories, in which they’re the hero and not the pawn.

In three days she’ll be gone, and they’ll just be Arsenal and Starling again. But not tonight.

 

***

 

Sin had almost gotten used to things happening to her. Whether it was her mother stumbling out for one last high never to return, or yet another foster family deciding that their house was too full for one more kid. Life was something that happened to you, in Sin’s world, and all you could do was dodge the bullets and roll with the punches.

You put on a tough face, a mean swagger and you walked into every room like you owned it. And that had worked for her, for a while. But swagger hadn’t been worth much, backed into an alley wall in the rain with a blade at her throat.

She remembered she hadn’t been crying, just making some sort of small, animal noise in the back of her throat as his buddies went to pin her limbs down. But then the knife was gone, and it was it’s bearer who was crying as a blonde in a mask shattered his kneecap with a decisive blow.

When Sara asks her to move to Gotham with them, _that’s_ what Sin remembers. Remembers a lifetime of events out of her hands, and she says yes instantly. Not just because she’d probably jump off a cliff if Sara asked, but because she craves what Sara offers. And that’s a chance to take control, to gain that same power Sara has over her own life, and those of others.

That’s why Sin trains so hard even Nyssa has to pull her back. That’s why she wants to be on every patrol, every night. That’s how she ended up backed into a corner with a madman.

He had a gun pointed at her, finger on the trigger. There was no time to do anything but react. Nothing to do but scoop up that bit of rebar off the alley floor and swing.

But somewhere along the line she’d put steel in her skinny arms, and half of his skull caves in like a rotten melon.

 _That’s_ what she can’t stop seeing, hunched over the trashcan puking up whatever’s left in her stomach.

The place where his head went soft, the blood, the way he wouldn’t stop _twitching_ until Nyssa quietly knelt and snapped his neck- Sara’s pulling her away and into her arms and that soft, animal noise is back.

 _I’m so sorry,_ Sara whispers, _I’m so, so sorry._

It’s not right. She was supposed to feel strong.


End file.
